Troubled Dokic gives performance from purgatory

 YOU could see the logic, albeit flawed with hindsight, from organisers of the Australian Open. Give Jelena Dokic a primetime opening night spot on the Rod Laver Arena and hope the home crowd roar her to ratings winning victory.

TEARS: Jelena Dokic is clearly upset as she speaks with boyfriend Tin Bikic on the eve of her appearance at the Australian Open (Getty Images)

Instead, the much-troubled Dokic - who 12 months ago reached the quarter-finals in Melbourne - slumped to a 6-1, 7-5 defeat to her occasional doubles partner Alisa Kleybanova, a performance from purgatory that will do little to help her very obvious fragility.

This arena will see its share of dramas over the next fortnight but tonight we got a glimpse into player's very personal inner torment, which only a voyeur would have found easy or enjoyable to watch.

When the volume is cranked up, there can be few better places to have a crowd on your side than Melbourne Park, a venue that lacks the reserve of Wimbledon and the vulgarity of Flushing Meadows.

But the silence was deafening as the Russian secured the first set in double-quick time.

Dokic gave an expectant audience the impression she had already lost, and consequently - with the time creeping towards midnight - many started racing for the next tram home.

Dokic has spent a career mired in controversy, with her now estranged father Damir, a deluded and dangerous drunk, causing most of the problems.

Daddy was a bully. I recall watching him make his daughter practice during a torrential rain storm that delayed a pre-Wimbledon tournament at Edgbaston.

Her rivals sheltered inside but Dokic, sodden to the skin and miserable, was made to hit a succession of thumping forehands back to her father, who has hunkered down under a huge golf umbrella.

If you were illustrating a book about the very worst in pushy sporting parents, this was the image for the front cover.

Dokic is now rightly-estranged from her old man but those around her are still causing problems.

Her boyfriend, Tin Bikic, and his brother Borna, also Dokic's coach, hit the headlines after a row with a passenger and a crew member on a flight to Melbourne. 

Dokic and her partner were pictured in a heated discussion during a practice session yesterday, an exchange that left the former world number four in tears and provided more art for the tabloids to salivate over.

It was the latest in a line of off-court problems that have distracted Dokic from the success she should be enjoying, as a player who, at her peak, could mix power and guile to devastating effect, which she underlined with a handful of shots during an improved second-set performance.

Having already briefly quit the sport once, Dokic's future - she turns 27 in April - looks far from secure.

After last year there was talk about a renaissance that few would argue she didn't deserve.

She admitted she was ‘running out of chances' and followed up her last-eight appearance with three consecutive wins for Australia in the Fed Cup.

But the season then stuttered, with a succession of first-round defeats before some confidence boosting wins on the lower tier ITF circuit.

Dokic's defeat here means the ranking points earned 12 months ago are gone, the road ahead is long and hard.

She gave little impression today that it was a journey she felt like making.

And it's hard to blame her.

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